The Maiku Hama Trilogy

Portland premiere of the new 4k restorations!

Part of the Hanabi Film Festival 2026. Limited festival passes available while supplies last.

Doors open at 12:30 PM. 

The Most Terrible Time in My Life at 1:00 PM.

The Stairway to the Distant Past at 3:00 PM. 

The Trap at 6:00 PM.

Launched to stardom by Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train, enigmatic actor Masatoshi Nagase thrives as the hardboiled detective wannabe Maiku Hama (a play on the American pulp novelist Mickey Spillane detective Mike Hammer) in Kaizô Hayashi’s (To Sleep So as to Dream) trilogy of the same name.

Stomping through the bustling-and-hustling port city of Yokohama, Hama operates out of a run-down movie theatre and his office sees every kind of customer: from rich ladies looking for runaway pups to serial murderers who look suspiciously like himself. A cult phenomena of 90s Japanese cinema, the trilogy would go on to inspire future generations and spawn its own anthology NTV television series titled The Private Detective Mike by 2002.

Screened in Japanese with English subtitles.